


From End to End

by theLiterator



Series: Pieces [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Break Up, Choices, F/F, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 21:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7774813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara has her army, but her life is a series of wrong decisions and she doesn't know which one hurts worse.</p><p>Nyssa knows what price she paid for Sara's freedom, and wouldn't change anything about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From End to End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Traxits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traxits/gifts).



Sara wanted to be able to say that she had returned to Starling City in a dignified silence, but she couldn’t.

She wasn’t the sort of person who really could return someplace in dignified silence in general, let alone on a private jet that was packed full of her fellow assassins-- her former fellow assassins, at least.

Malik came and sat with her while Nyssa spoke with the others and spent time on her phone, probably running the League, and that’s a story she knows one day she’ll have to hear, but… but she can’t yet. Maybe not for years and years.

Still, she owed it to Nyssa, to whatever Nyssa had sacrificed for her, to learn, no matter how painful she knew it must be.

The vial of poison weighed heavy around her neck the way Sara hadn’t known a piece of jewelry could be heavy, the way she’d always suspected Ollie felt about Yao-Fei’s bow.

It kept her attention, a constant distraction, and Malik tugged it free of her shirt and stared at it for a long, silent moment. Sara was sure he had something he wanted to say about it, but he kept his opinion to himself.

“I’m surprised,” he said simply, and his gaze was piercing, defensive.

“Are you?” Sara asked him, because she was pretty sure he was lying. And if she wasn’t allowed to lie to herself because of where she was, then neither should he be.

He shook his head and pulled on the chain, dragging her closer.

“No,” he said. “And yet, I am. I’m glad--” he cut himself off, shook his head. Sara looked around; most of the assassins not otherwise occupied were staring at her, and she wanted the snarl at them, make them mind their own business, but she’d learned how to play this game at their sides, and she knew better than to lose her composure.

It would reflect badly on Nyssa, who called her Beloved, and as such took responsibility for her behavior.

“Ra’s al Ghul loves you, Sara Lance,” he said finally, instead of answering her question. It was probably better that way. “I hope it… I hope it is what armors her and not the blade in her back.”

Sara grabbed his hand where his fingers were wrapped around the vial, curled it in her own. “I’d never hurt her.”

“Not with a blade,” Malik agreed, and Sara, unwilling to argue the point to lying, unwilling to perjure herself in front of those she needed to defend her city, untangled his fingers from the necklace and settled back into the cushions of her seat in lieu of reply.

She shut her eyes and didn’t mean to sleep, but she barely even noticed when Nyssa joined her and curled, warm and loving, into her side.

When they approached the airfield and she had to wake up, to prepare, her fingers were cramped from the way she had been holding the vial in her sleep.

Nyssa watched as she hid the necklace back away, but her expression was unreadable, and Sara wondered if she had been gone too long, and then she wondered why she was thinking that way, when she’d never wanted to return at all.

***

When Sara had told Nyssa that she needed to warn Ollie about the help she’d secured, she hadn’t meant for this. She was pretty sure that if Malik or Alekios or any of the men ever found out, they wouldn’t believe her, but she really hadn’t meant for anything like this to happen, not with Nyssa-- with Ra’s-- in the city and waiting for her return.

“Sara,” Ollie said, carefully shoving her jacket down over her shoulders and frowning with the intensity of his confusion, his loneliness, his-- his something. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“What?” Sara demanded, feeling cold and hot all at once. She wanted to punch him. She wanted to kiss him. “Slade is-- Ollie, Slade is as much my fault as he is yours. More. I just-- I wanted to find help.”

“Help?” he asked, and his hands were hot through the thin fabric of her tanktop, and she wanted to push him away, she wanted him to shove the fabric up and heat her bare skin.

She wanted to cry.

“The League--”

“They’re mercenaries, Sara. They weren’t going to come at your beckoning. You quit, you--”

She kissed him to shut him up, and he took the hint.

They didn’t have time for this; the moment stretched out between them forever, the preliminaries were over with too-quickly.

Oliver liked her naked, liked to run bow-calloused fingers over her skin, liked to taste her scars.

Oliver liked the way she looked at him when he was naked, like she wasn’t afraid.

(She had always been afraid-- he hadn’t been her first, but he had been her first love, the first thing she’d stolen from Laurel that Laurel wouldn’t have given her for the asking. The first victim she’d felt guilty for torturing, the first lover she’d ever betrayed, and here she was betraying him again, and betraying the lover who had never deserved her brand of treachery at the same time. Sara was skilled at this, in her own way. Truly.)

He fucked her hard and fast against the exercise mats, and she called him Ollie and he called her Sara, and they pretended for a few minutes that everything was okay, until it was over with and his fingers traced the chain around her neck.

His eyes were dark, and he visibly fought with himself before cupping both pendant and vial in the palm of his hand. “This is new,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, so Sara didn’t answer. “What does it mean?” he finally breathed out, and Sara shrugged.

“If I knew,” she told him honestly, because she was pretty sure he deserved honesty, and she was equally sure she’d never be able to be this honest with Nyssa. “I probably wouldn’t be wearing it.”

He frowned harder, biting his lip and leaning in close to examine the gold seal on the vial, the play of the fluorescent overhead lights on the viscous liquid within. “Is it-- it’s that poison, isn’t it?”

Sara tilted her head back just to feel her hair brush against her back, and gazed at Oliver with hooded eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “But don’t worry; it can’t hurt me. Well, unless I find something hot enough to melt gold.”

“Felicity would know how hot it would have to be,” Oliver said, carelessly. Like he didn’t know how much that hurt, to hear her name.

It wasn’t like Sara went around-- “Nyssa would too,” she said, smiling cruelly. “Seeing’s how she’s the one who did it in the first place.”

“Is this her name?” Oliver asked, a bite to his words that he was trying to suppress.

“No,” Sara said, pushing him down and straddling him. It was easy enough to get him worked up enough for a round two, but she knew he didn’t like it, didn’t like how hyper-sensitive he got when he was post-orgasm.

He didn’t say anything when she stroked him and lined him up and sank down onto him, just bit his lip and watched her, guarded. “You think I’d fuck you like this with her name around my neck?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied, but he didn’t push her off.

***

She didn’t end up warning him after all, though if he hadn’t figured it out it was because he was as dumb as everyone always said. She’d told Nyssa to meet her at the SCPD headquarters building, so that was where she went next, even though she probably smelled like sex and Ollie and sex with Ollie, which wasn’t fair to Laurel at all, but then…

When had she ever been? Why start today, when she was being grossly unfair to everyone else already?

“Sara!” her dad called and she couldn’t help the way she collapsed into his arms, the way she had to stifle a sob when his hand reached up to stroke her hair. “I missed you,” he whispered in her ear, and he meant it.

“Missed you too,” she said, drawing away. Laurel was sitting at a desk and watching them warily, and Sara tried to smile. Laurel tried to wave, and Sara felt something unclench in her gut.

“Daddy, I brought help,” she said in an undertone, wary of the rest of the cops all gathered up, fearful and stinking of sweat in their heavy riot gear.

Her dad drew back a little, tried to smile and grimace at the same time. “Sweetheart,” he said softly. “We’ve got this. You don’t have to--”

“The city is falling apart,” Sara said, louder, clearer, crueler. “I had to do something. Slade’s-- this guy? He’s mad because … because of me. And I have to stop him if I can. Even if it means…”

She glanced around at the men, her dad’s friends, men she’d grown up with like uncles, and she smiled as best she could. “I can’t let everyone die because five years ago, we weren’t alone on that stupid island.”

None of them quite acknowledged what she was saying, the way none of them had quite acknowledged her when they’d been getting the ambulance for her and Laurel and her mom at the docks, and she nodded at them. A few nodded back, still not really looking at her.

“What did you do?” Laurel demanded.

Sara shrugged. “What I had to,” she replied, and then Laurel was on her, and Sara choked on her panic but didn’t fight back against… against the hug.

“Don’t,” Laurel said. “Please don’t leave us?”

Sara leaned into the hug and tried not to cry. “I won’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t, I can’t. I’m just Sara again, I’m not theirs, I’m yours.”

Laurel held her for far too long, rocking her and crying quietly into Sara’s hair, and Sara let her until her hip started buzzing from the cellphone Nyssa had given her.

“I gotta take this call, Laurel. Please, I’ll be right back.”

Laurel let her go reluctantly, and Sara repeated her promise. “I’ll be right back, I swear.”

Nyssa caught her in the hallway, phone halfway to her ear, and kissed her, and God help her, Sara kissed her back.

Nyssa kissed not a thing like Oliver, and it felt like rewriting her past to let Nyssa hold her close like she was special, cherished, loved, and she let it happen anyway.

She was selfish, and Nyssa al Ghul had brought out the worst in her since the first day they’d met.

“Stay,” she had begged. She hadn’t wanted to be alone, and she’d thought that everyone else was dead: Slade and Ollie and Anatoly and-- and Nyssa had been a beautiful stranger, and Sara had never felt more desperately greedy in her entire life.

But then, she had been dying at the time.

“Nyssa,” she whispered as she drew back, and Nyssa’s fingers tangled in her hair, and Nyssa’s smile tangled around her lips so she looked happy and anguished all at once.

“Beloved,” Nyssa replied warmly.

“I need you to keep Laurel safe,” Sara said, thinking about death and selfishness for a few moments longer. “I need--”

“Consider it done,” Nyssa replied, and Sara whirled at the sound of footsteps in the hall, and she felt more than saw Nyssa draw the arrow and let it loose. Sara dropped to a crouch and rolled Laurel into the recovery position, dragging her out of the way in the quiet hall. “She will sleep, and we will see to it that none disturb her rest here.”

Sara nodded and stood. “I guess it’s time for you to meet the archer,” she replied. “Only, there’s something I haven’t told you. About him. And you should know it, before we do anything else.”

***

Nyssa felt-- she felt betrayed, which was pointless; it wasn’t as if Sara had done anything she hadn’t expected, hadn’t implicitly condoned. Nyssa had always known that Ollie had held Sara’s heart long before Nyssa had ever met her, and she had resigned herself to the fate of being second to Sara’s nameless archer even before she had decided to allow her Beloved that much sought after freedom.

Still, finding out that Ollie and the archer were one and the same felt… monumental. Momentous. It was something that Ra’s’s pool of information and intrigue and blackmail had not seen fit to supply her, and it was something that Sara, she thought, could have mentioned sooner.

Not that it would have changed anything. Nyssa knew, deep in the dark, cold parts of her soul that her father had trained and tortured and treasured, that she would have made every step the same, no matter whether she had known. She knew that the Pit would not have cared about Sara’s motives any more than it had cared about her father’s when it revived her, and she knew that her father would still have died at her hand.

“I love you,” Nyssa said aloud, and Sara’s expression of fear and shame smoothed away at the admission. Such power those words held, she thought, watching for any sign that Sara had held any other secrets from her. Such power in truth, maybe. Almost as much power in that as in killing.

Nyssa pursed her lips. “Does he know who I am?” she asked, and since she was only very minutely sure of the answer herself, it was an unfair question.

“He knows I love you,” Sara offered, a tentative return on the admission Nyssa had granted her, and there was no lie in it, Nyssa thought, even if it was not the whole truth. For as much as Sara loved her, she hated everything Nyssa represented, she hated the parts of Nyssa her bright laughter could never touch, and…

In that seed of hatred, she and Nyssa marked their differences.

Nyssa allowed Sara precedence as they descended into the secret basement where dwelt the archer.

Seeing Ollie as she looked at the archer clarified things, and Nyssa watched him carefully as he went to Sara, held her, scolded her. He loved her too, she thought, which was good. People should love Sara. Even Nyssa’s father had held some small affection for the girl, and there had been times when Nyssa had doubted he had that even for her.

(There was a vial of poison, slick and sweet and never used, that proved her wrong in that assumption, and Nyssa would ever be grateful for that token of his love.)

“What did you do?” Ollie demanded, fingers clenched tight on Sara’s shoulders, and Nyssa smiled.

“I am Ra’s al Ghul,” she told him. “The Demon’s Head. I bring men, and aid that you will find nowhere else.”

“What will this cost us?” Ollie said, glancing at Sara and then jerking his gaze back to Nyssa, as if he were afraid she’d realize how precious she was. As if Nyssa didn’t already know.

“My beloved informs me that the siege against her city is for a debt she owes,” Nyssa said calmly. “By law, her honor is my honor, and I will repay her debts.”

“Sara,” Ollie said. “Slade isn’t--”

“Slade is entirely my fault,” Sara replied tartly. “Nyssa just wants to help.”

“You said you wouldn’t go back!” he blurted out, and then Nyssa could see it, the sweetness Sara had described, the innocence.

The realization churned in her guts, and Nyssa wondered if she had managed to be more like Ollie, if Sara would have granted her more of her heart.

It mattered not.

“Ta-er al-Sahfar is no more,” she said. “Her allegiance to the League was dissolved as all blood debts are.”

“Oh?” Ollie said. Sara flinched, and her hand went to the tokens Nyssa had draped around her throat.

Nyssa felt a chill of satisfaction-- Ollie could never sacrifice as much for Sara as Nyssa had. She would win in that, at least.

When she didn’t continue, the blonde woman that had hovered on the periphery of the encounter broke in with “Wait, weren’t you the Heir to the Demon like, last month?”

When the focus swung to her, she blushed, and Nyssa smiled. It was stupid, superficial, and somewhat predictable, but she liked the woman already. “I was,” she said, flicking her fingers idly. “My father was killed in a trial by combat just shortly after we-- after you surveilled me.”

The woman turned bright red and dropped her hands back to the keyboard in front of the bank of monitors she was working with. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Only not really because you’re an assassin and we should keep an eye on you. Obviously.”

“Trial by combat?” Ollie asked, and Nyssa inclined a shoulder in his direction, not shifting her focus away from the woman and her frantic attempts to appear busy. “I don’t suppose that would be the way to discharge a blood debt?”

Nyssa felt her smile stretch and warp, and, ever attendant to her moods, Malik drew steel and took a step toward them. A sharp gesture stilled him, but the tension in the room had become palpable to everyone, and Ollie’s own bodyguard had their hands on their weapons and their eyes steely and cold in preparation to deal in death.

She approved.

“Yes,” she said, turning back to him once she had mastered her expression. “Now then. I hear you are in need of an army.”

Ollie raised an eyebrow at her but allowed the redirection with all the politicism of any bred to the League. “Yes. Thank you-- I know you say you’re acting on Sara’s honor, but I will consider this a favor done to me.”

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow, but she was Ra’s now, not Nyssa, so all she said was, “Ra's al Ghul is ever generous, but I will remember Oliver Queen.”

One of Ollie’s guards started cursing rather creatively, and Nyssa couldn’t help her smile growing broader.

“Now,” she said, her voice calm but carrying the authority of her birth and her blood with it heavily enough to silence even Ollie’s contingent. “I hear there is a war on your streets. I have brought you an army; now we must fight.”

***

They ended the day with thankfully few casualties; one of the newest League recruits had been killed when he’d allowed himself to be cornered by Slade Wilson’s men, and Nyssa mourned him briefly, honored him by closing his eyes herself, and then left Alekios to see to the rest.

Ollie held Sara in a loose, jubilant embrace, and Nyssa watched them, smiling, until Sara noticed her and flung herself into Nyssa’s arms and kissed her wetly.

“Hah!” Sara said, half laughter, half triumph. “You kicked ass, Ra’s al Ghul!”

Her smile was warm enough to include everyone around them in it, and Nyssa smiled back, if not as warmly. “You are as skilled as any could hope, Sara Lance,” Nyssa said.

“Sara, honey?” Detective Lance called, and Nyssa looked over at him. “Are you--” he shook his head as if to free himself of thoughts of her leaving. Nyssa was rather sympathetic to his emotions.

“Your father craves your attention, Beloved,” Nyssa said, dodging another kiss and drawing away. She had never been the one to break their embrace before, and the realization sent chills through her. She pasted on a warm expression despite that, and turned to face Detective Lance.

Sara didn’t move from her side; she reeled her father in and wrapped him in a hug so near to Nyssa that she could feel the warmth of him. If she hadn’t been armored in thick, protective layers, she would have felt the brush of his clothing against her skin.

“Daddy, you made it through,” Sara mumbled into her father’s shoulder. “I was worried-- but we didn’t have enough to spare, and…”

“I offered to station my man at your back,” Nyssa said, “But your daughter felt that he would distract your own men from their tasks.”

She frowned to show that such undisciplined behavior was distasteful to her, though she knew it was more the nature of her men than that of Lance’s that would have caused issues.

Still, she had an image to uphold.

“And you must be-- ah-- Nyssa, right?” Detective Lance said. Nyssa was unsurprised to find that when he pulled free of Sara’s grasp, he managed it in such a way as to separate her from Nyssa.

Nyssa inclined her head regally. “I am now Ra’s al Ghul,” she replied; not quite a correction, but she was as much a leader of men as Lance, if not more so. “We have never properly met. It is my pleasure,” she added, trying for a genuine tone and wondering if it had fallen short.

Her body was starting to ache from the exertion of the last several hours of fighting.

Malik appeared at her side, Alekios a pace behind him.

“My lord Ra’s,” he said in deferential tones. “The men need rest and food.”

“See to it,” she told him, wondering, not for the first time, if she allowed him too much authority.

It was hardly a time for such concerns-- the future of her reign was stretched out before her. She could deal with any insurrection she invited another day.

“You’ll come for dinner,” Lance told her, his hand draped protectively over Sara’s shoulder. “Or do you have to go?”

Nyssa glanced back to see Malik and Alekios seeing to matters quite effectively and then bowed slightly to Lance. “I would gladly accept your invitation,” she said. “Are there matters of the city you must see to? I am afraid I am quite unversed in the way things are handled from your side of the law.”

She smiled to show it was a joke, and after a heartbeat, he laughed. It started out slightly forced-sounding, but when Sara’s perfect laughter joined in, he relaxed and shut his eyes and laughed properly, a tenor counterpoint to Sara’s alto. Nyssa let her posture slip, slightly, and watched them.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, clapping her on her shoulder the way she had watched him do with Laurel and Ollie and Sara. “I needed that. So, I’d bet all the good take out is closed-- who wants chicken parmigiana?”

Nyssa was suddenly and inexplicably trapped in a sense memory of Italy, her father’s hand huge and warm around hers as they waited in line at a tiny cafeteria in Florence, and when she tried to shake it off, to step back into the present, everything wavered cool and green, and her father fell to her feet with a hole in his chest.

“Nyssa?” Sara whispered, low and urgent. “Nyssa, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Nyssa lied, focusing on her. Lance had seized her forearm and was holding her up while Sara watched with wide eyes. She didn’t think anyone but the two of them had noticed her sudden lapse. “The fighting was rough on us all,” she added, as excuse or explanation for her faltering.

“Well,” Lance said. “You can lay on the couch while I do all the work. Sara, do you want to invite anyone else along?” Laurel had made her way in their direction and was waiting with a steely expression for them to conclude their conversation.

Sara looked back over toward the little clump of Ollie and his guard, and she shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “Not tonight, at least.”

***

Nyssa sleeps fitfully. Detective Lance had watched as she took off her boots, as Sara helped her peel away her gauntlets and unbuckle her breastplate, and then he had shown her to the living room with its centerpiece of a television set and the lumpy, worn couch to lay on.

She was barely aware of the blanket that was carefully draped over her body by someone’s caring hands, and then…

Nyssa had slept fitfully ever since her delightful encounter with the Lazarus Pit, dreams of dying and dying again, dreams of killing: her father, the sister she had never known, the nephew she did not believe was real, Sara, Laurel, the archer.

The loves she had engendered in her womanhood turned to nothing more than the messy nightmare apparitions of a child.

“Nyssa,” she heard, and it could have been her father, so she turned away from the sound. “Nyssa, sweetheart, you need food in you before you turn in for good. Nyssa, wake up,” and she did.

Detective Lance was crouched close to her, his eyes like Sara’s, filled with concern, affection, things Ra’s al Ghul had little need of, things Nyssa had long since learned to be wary of when offered.

She blinked at him. The house smelled of warm herbs, of garlic and cooked meat, and she tried to pull herself to sitting, but her side cramped up, just where she had been fatally injured, and she reached to rub the cramp away.

“My apologies,” she said in low tones. “I did not mean to sleep so.”

Detective Lance snorted. “You needed it,” he said. “You look much better now. But lets get some color in your cheeks, yeah?”

Dinner was not the formal affair it had been in her father’s chambers, but it was not the sweet game of it she and Sara had played in her own. It was something altogether…

Alien.

“So,” Laurel said, folding her hands neatly around her fork and knife. She held them differently than the way Nyssa had been taught, and Nyssa remembered showing Sara how not to give offense if her father invited her to join their meals.

Clumsily, Nyssa tried to emulate Laurel, to be as her family was meant to be, but she did not prove as dextrous at shifting this as she was and holding different swords, so she laid the utensils down and clasped her hands together in her lap as tightly as she could, until it felt like she was bruising bone.

“You’re here to take my sister back?”

“No,” Nyssa replied. “As I have said: Ta’er al-Sahfer is dead to the League.”

“Then why are you here?” Laurel asked. “Why did you come for someone you say is dead.”

“Sara Lance is my Beloved,” Nyssa said delicately. Lance leaned over and cut into her chicken for her, peering at the meat that was revealed. “As the Beloved to Ra’s al Ghul, the League owes her its protection.”

“That’s not what it felt like last week,” Laurel said, stabbing into her meal with vicious threat. Nyssa saw the way Detective Lance was eyeing her plate, like a nervous nursemaid, so she made herself take the utensils again, and, holding them the way she’d always held them, she cut into the food, took a small bite.

“Last week,” Nyssa said slowly, though it had been more than a month and she still counted the days that passed between them. “Last week Sara Lance was not Beloved to Ra’s, and as the Heir to the Demon, my honor was not my own.”

“So? What happened?”

“Laurel--” Sara interrupted, her voice cracking. “Don’t. Please, don’t…”

“I killed him,” Nyssa said, and she sawed into the chicken, pulled away a bit that was too big to comfortably eat, and popped it between her lips, chewing to keep from speaking further.

“Oh, because that’s reassuring. You killed him? You’re a murderer. You’re eating dinner at a cop’s table, and--”

“Oh, come on, Laurel. I doubt Dad has jurisdiction in Nanda Parbat,” Sara snapped. 

Detective Lance cleared his throat. “I do not. And, in fact, were you aware that the United States does not recognize Nanda Parbat as a sovereign nation?”

Laurel’s and Sara’s gazes snapped to him. “I looked it up!” he protested. “I can’t believe you didn’t, Laurel. You like… knowing.”

Sara snorted.

“The United States is not my concern,” Nyssa began. She hesitated before continuing. As Ra’s, should it be?

“But Sara is?” Laurel asked.

“By my honor, she must always be.”

Sara flinched and dropped her focus to her plate, the motion causing the necklace Nyssa had draped around her neck to catch the light.

Nyssa was torn: she was hurting her Beloved, and that felt viscerally and intimately wrong, but she felt a small shard of metallic triumph that her words could cut so easily.

***

Laurel dragged Sara into the bathroom while Detective Lance was trying to either teach Nyssa how to do the washing-up, or convince her to go lay down again.

“Does she know?” Laurel asked, turning on the fan and the sink taps to cover the sound of their conversation, like they were little girls again keeping secrets from their mother.

“Know what?” Sara asked, fingering the length of chain around her neck.

“That you’re fucking Oliver?” Laurel all but spat. “Sara, this isn’t a game. This woman is terrifying. You can’t demand she show up and then, what, go sleep with Oliver while she’s waiting for you to hurry up and save the city?”

“Laurel, I don’t--”

“You think, after all these years, I don’t know what his cologne smells like? Or the way you hold yourself when you’ve gotten laid?” her fingers were tight against Sara’s skin, biting in to bruise and hurt.

Sara had always hated Laurel. Loved her, yes, but the hate had always been there, boiling and dark under the surface.

“Laurel, she’s never tried to compete with Ollie,” Sara said.

“The woman killed her father for you,” Laurel replied. “She shouldn’t have to compete with anyone; she should have a solid yes or no from you.”

“I don’t have one!” Sara blurted out. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. I can’t.”

Against her will, tears were managing to escape from the corners of her eyes, and she wiped at them furiously. “I wish I could be good like you, Laurel, but I’m not, and I never will be. I’m not even any good at being evil. You saw… when she came with us to rescue you from Slade. You saw her. I used to be like that! I used to--”

Sara couldn’t find the words anymore, but the tears kept welling, hot and dark and insistent against her eyelids. She buried her face in her hands and then Laurel dragged her into a hug, rocking her and humming softly.

“Hey, hey,” Laurel said. “It’s okay, I love you, you’re my sister. It’s going to be okay.”

“No it isn’t,” Sara said. “I can’t… I keep betraying them. Both of them. You, too. And Dad, and… It’s not okay.”

“Shh, Sara,” Laurel soothed. “You haven’t betrayed me.”

Sara hated Laurel most of all when she lied.

She pulled herself together and emerged from the bathroom to the sight of her father teaching Nyssa how to wash dishes. 

Nyssa hadn't changed into clean clothes, but she had stripped off most of her armor, and her sleeves were tucked up above her elbows and she had her hair tied back inexpertly in an elastic band.

Sara’s heart clenched and she couldn't help but move to her side, half-conscious that she had resorted to the liquid movements she'd learned from Nyssa and Nyssa’s tutors and hating it a little.

 _”Ra’s al Ghul does not do dishes,”_ Sara murmured in League Arabic, unsure if she was teasing or not.

Nyssa tilted her head to face Sara with the smile that from her was as good as laughter.

 _”It seemed less dangerous than conversation, Beloved,”_ Nyssa replied. She bent to brush her lips against Sara’s cheek.

“Since when does Ra’s al Ghul back away from danger?” Sara replied in English, not suppressing her return grin. She brushed Nyssa’s hair out of her face and Nyssa flinched slightly from the touch before shifting her weight, resettling, and catching Sara’s hand before she'd pulled it back entirely.

“That bad?” Sara asked. Her father moved behind her, and Nyssa’s eyes flicked back to him but must have been reassured by what she read in his face because she relaxed further.

“It is only as it must be, Sara Lance,” she replied.

Sara bit her lip and carefully extricated herself from Nyssa’s personal space, and her Dad’s hand dropped to her shoulder once she was too far to feel Nyssa’s warmth.

“Want to talk about it?” Dad asked, squeezing once and then offering his hand to Nyssa.

Nyssa nodded regally, and then slipped her hand into his, letting him squeeze it and draw her away from the sink. Laurel deftly inserted herself in Nyssa’s place and grinned.

“I've got this,” she said, shooing Sara out.

Sara turned on the water and shook her head. “She doesn't want me.”

Laurel shoved her shoulder against Sara’s and handed her a dish to rinse. “I don't know about that.”

“Laurel, I lived with the woman for years. I-- I can tell. Trust me.”

***

“Now,” Quentin said, shutting the door to the room he'd claimed as his office. Laurel had, at some point, used it as an exercise room, but Tommy had converted it into his own office, up until--

Laurel had been obviously relieved when he'd taken over.

Even he hadn't been able to touch the rickety flat pack desk or replace the too-small desk chair, but it served well enough.

Nyssa slid to the floor to sit tailor style and stare up at him. He hadn't been able to, before, but now he could see the exhaustion in her eyes, the flicker of fear.

“I may not be some sort of assassin,” he said, “But I've been working for the city my whole adult life, so I know politics, and I've been a father almost as long, so I know daughters. Lay it on me.”

“You love Sara very much,” Nyssa said slowly, and Quentin spared a moment to consider that: she'd spoken that other language, with Sara, a lot more fluidly, and he wondered if the difference was in degree of trust or in fluency. He had the feeling that asking her, or even attempting to make things easy for her, would be seen as a sign of disrespect and lose him this tentative trust.

After all, he did know daughters.

“Yes,” he said. “She's my daughter.”

Nyssa nodded as slowly as she'd spoken. “Yes.” Her expression went blank and she nodded again, then said with great solemnity in an even lower tone. “My father loved me too.”

“Yeah?” he asked. Given what he'd heard and figured out over the last few hours, he doubted that, but it wasn't his place.

He wasn't even sure that _this_ was his place, but he'd done as much for Oliver Queen, and would have in a heartbeat done so for Tommy, if it had been needed.

Nyssa had kidnapped Dinah and poisoned Laurel, but she'd also saved Sara back when everyone else hadn't even known she'd been alive to save. He owed her at least to try to help.

“Sara cannot know of this,” Nyssa replied.

“Trouble at home?” he asked.

“She will think it her own fault.” Nyssa reached for his hand again and he let her take it willingly. “It is not. The trouble is my own.”

Quentin nodded.

“You are a leader of men,” she said, then stopped.

Quentin had a feeling he knew where this was going.

“How many are there in Nanda Parbat?” he asked, dreading the answer.

“Five thousand three hundred and forty nine.” The cool matter of factness with which she delivered the reply didn't shock him so much as the number. “Not all are assassins. Man cannot live on death alone,” this delivered with the careful reverence of an oft repeated maxim. “But I have almost a thousand men who can be relied upon to take up arms, and twice as many who are too young or too old to fight but still able.”

“I'm going to go out on a limb here,” Quentin said, “and guess that the reason you only brought a dozen with you isn't because you thought they could handle it.”

Nyssa shook her head mutely. If she'd been his daughter or any of his daughter's school friends, he'd have given her a shoulder to cry on, let her lose her composure in privacy but not alone.

He squeezed Nyssa's fingers instead.

“I am failing,” she whispered. Her free hand went to her throat and clenched on nothing before dropping back to her lap. “My father knew I would fail, and he sought an alternative, but I was selfish and could not take it.”

Her gaze suddenly met his. “Have your men ever hated you?” she asked.

“Yeah, probably. Comes with the job. So they, what, they don't trust you?”

“Would you?”

Quentin sighed. He wasn't sure if he was too old for this or not old enough. “I do, actually. You seem like a very ruthless, determined, intelligent woman, and my Sara… I can't…” he shook his head. “Nyssa-- Ra’s, whoever you are, I trust you, God help me.”

She stared at him.

“So, is there something specific causing the unrest?” he asked.

She looked at him. “My father has had… Several children, throughout his reign. This is, in fact, the first time in over a century that Nanda Parbat has lacked an Heir.”

“You're young yet--”

Nyssa shook her head. “I am the first woman Ra’s since before-- I am the first woman Ra’s. And I am…”

She stared at a point above Quentin’s shoulder and bit out: “Not as other women.”

Quentin wanted to rub his temples but didn't dare. “And? Does your heir have to be your child? Or can you adopt? Name someone else your heir? There's other things, too, that, ah, women can use.”

“I cannot trust them not to kill me once I have named them, and I can trust no one to be Consort: too many of those who I trust most have their own supporters, and power is its own reward.”

She bit her lip, a gesture she almost had to have learned from Sara, it was so familiar. “And the League has more power than most imagine.”

He shivered at that, didn't ask. Didn't _want_ to ask.

“So,” he said. “You go outside the League. Surely there is one person out there with the right kind of stuff to make your people accept him, who you can pay off or, or, something.” He thought for a second, about artificial insemination, about the woman in his office who’d bought sperm off the internet to have a kid since she couldn’t keep a husband, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up, or if she already knew about it and discounted it. For all he knew, it was a reluctance to be pregnant that had her in this predicament in the first place.

Her expression brightened.

Then she shook her head and shrugged, standing up and drawing him to his feet.

When he caught her eyes again she looked a lot better, amused, even.

“Tell me, Detective Lance, what do you know of Oliver Queen?”

“He's a good kid,” Quentin replied, somewhat surprised to realize he meant it. The ache of losing Sara burned a lot less, and he seemed trying to hide it, but the island had made him grow up. “But not any kind of competition for a girl like you. C’mon, sweetheart. If you're staying the night, you'll want to get cleaned up.”

“I would like that,” she said. “Thank you.”

***

Nyssa woke up alone, and wondered how she'd managed to miss Sara slipping out of her bed. She stretched, feeling the exertions of the day before in every muscle.

Her fingers clenched unconsciously around something that she'd taken hold of in her sleep and she gripped harder, confused when it wasn't the hilt of her knife.

She knew, though, what it was; no matter how she’d like to pretend she didn’t.

Opening her hand, she stared at her mother’s name, her father’s last gift.

Nyssa was not surprised: she had, after all, paid for Sara’s freedom with her life. Her father's life, too. It would not behoove her to mourn the loss of something she had given away.

Besides, it made her next move that much easier.

She slipped from the bed and shed Sara’s borrowed pajamas and dropped the chain back around her neck.


End file.
